Margi Display-to-Go 4MB Review

The Display-to-Go from Margi is a video card for laptops, enabling you to use 2 or more monitors with your laptop. It is available for the list price of US$ 299 directly from Margi's website.

Test system

DELL Latitude CPt S with a 600 Mhz Mobile Celeron and 128 MB RAM. Display-to-Go 4MB with VGA connector. Operating systems used: Windows 2000 with Service Pack 2, Windows Me.

Installation

Installation on Windows 2000 went without problems, on Windows Me it didn't work right away, but rebooting solved the problem. Review has been updated on July 29, 2002, for the 2.12 drivers.

Features

A typical application for this card are presentations: with PowerPoint 2000, you can run the presentation fullscreen on the second monitor, and still have access to your notes on the laptop monitor.

With overlay support, videos play smoothly on the Display-to-Go. Note that overlays is the only accelerated DirectDraw feature, there is no 3D hardware acceleration, neither for Direct3D nor OpenGL.

Below is a screen shot of the test setup on Windows Me. Monitors 1 and 2 are connected to the built-in ATI RAGE MOBILITY card, monitor 3 is the Display-to-Go. On Windows 2000, I had only 2 monitors, due to the ATI card not supporting multiple monitors on Windows 2000 (see the FAQ for more on this issue).

Margi also includes a multi-monitor utility (see screen shot below). Features:

Move Taskbar: moves the taskbar to the other monitor
Move Icons: moves all desktop icons to the other monitor
Gather Windows: moves all windows to the monitor the utility is on (or the taskbar when invoked from the system tray menu)
Desktop Layout: save/restore multiple desktop icon layouts
Settings: opens Display Properties
Mirroring (Windows 2000 only, the feature didn't work with Windows XP even though it is available): instead of using the Display-to-Go to extend the desktop, you can use it to mirror the primary monitor. Performance is excellent, on par with a hardware mirroring solution. Issues: video overlays are disabled when mirroring, meaning that you won't be able to mirror fullscreen video with decent performance; switching between mirror and extended desktop modes requires a reboot
Rotating the monitor (Windows 2000/XP only): for use with monitors that support portrait mode. To configure this option, select the Display-to-Go display and click Options. I had to reboot to get it working correctly

A note on standby support: by default, standby is disabled. To enable it, open the Margi utility, click Configure and check the 'Allow suspend' box. Standby is only supported on Windows 2000/XP.

Specifications:

Video RAM: 4 MB
Card type: Type II CardBus PCMCIA
Chipset: Chips and Technologies 69030
Monitor connector: VGA (for standard monitors), DFP or DVI (for LCD monitors). One connector cable of your choice is included, additional ones are available for ordering from the Margi website
Supported operating systems: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, MacOS 9. Windows XP support was added in the 2.10 drivers

Maximum resolutions:

1024x768 24-bit 85 Hz
1280x1024 24-bit 75 Hz
1600x1200 16-bit 60 Hz

Using lower colordepths doesn't provide better refresh rates.

Problems

Windows 2000/XP

No support for hibernation and ejecting the card while in use:
this is very annoying, especially on a laptop. It also doesn't help to disable the Display-to-Go monitor first.

Windows 98/Me

No support for standby and hibernation.

Summary

This is a great card for laptop users, whether you need it for presentations or to get more screen real estate when at home. The only disappointment is the lack of hibernation support. I'm also very impressed with the improvements their drivers have made since the first version of the review back in December of 2000: bugs have been fixed and several new features have been added, such as mirroring, rotation and standby support.